All About Zwift’s Updated Tri Spoke // Disc Wheel

The new Zwift Big Spin series has just kicked off, and many riders are joining the events in hopes of spinning and winning limited-time novelty unlocks. One of the most popular is the “Zwift Tri Spoke // Disc Wheel”. It’s an eye-catching wheelset and the first tri spoke in game, so many Zwifters are riding extra Big Spin events just for these wheels!

Unfortunately, the Tri Spoke was misconfigured when it first launched, meaning it turned in super-slow times more on par with gravel bikes than road bikes (see original speed test results). Zwift fixed this issue quickly, though, rolling out the fix in the version 1.61 update that was released this week.

Once we downloaded the update, we went to work running fresh tests. Zwift has indeed reconfigured the wheels, but the star ratings didn’t change: they are still rated 3 stars for aero and 1 for weight. This illustrates how non-granular Zwift’s star ratings actually are. They simply aren’t precise enough to communicate actual in-game performance in a useful way for picky racers, so we ran the wheels through our battery of speed tests.

Here’s everything you need to know about the updated Tri Spoke /Disc Wheel’s performance in Zwift.

Aero (Flat/Rolling) Performance

Tri spoke + disc wheels are commonly seen on TT setups because they’re fast. So we expected Zwift’s new Tri Spoke to be pretty zippy on the flats.

The updated wheels aren’t anything to write home about, though. Despite looking quite aero, especially with that rear disc, the wheels turn in a test time of 50:53.5 on our test course, which is two laps of Tempus Fugit totaling 34.6km.

This is almost 3 minutes faster than the old misconfigured wheels (so that’s a big improvement), but also 19.5s slower than the 808/Disc wheelset, which is the slower of the disc wheelsets. The aero performance of the updated Tri Spoke is now within 1 seconds of the ENVE SES 6.7, Zipp 404, and Zipp 353 NSW wheels… all wheels that are better all-arounders than aero performers.

Climb Performance

Given the Tri Spoke’s 1-star weight rating and mid-tier aero performance, we didn’t expect great things on our Alpe test. We got what we expected.

The Tri Spoke // Disc Wheel turns in an Alpe climb time of 49:47, which is almost 2 minutes faster than the misconfigured Tri Spoke, but still quite slow. These are still the slowest climbing wheels in game, 8s slower up the Alpe than the next slowest wheelset (Zipp 808/Disc combo) and 33s slower than the best climbing wheels (the Lightweight Meilenstein and Roval Alpinist CLX.)

Note: all test results above are from a 75kg, 183cm rider holding 300W steady using the Zwift Aero frame.

Conclusions

The original Tri Spoke wheels were so slow that riders could easily sense their poor performance in races or RoboPacer riders. The updated wheels are much faster, so riders using them probably won’t notice a performance hit compared to other rigs.

That said, there is indeed a performance hit! The aero performance of these wheels puts them mid-pack, and they’re the Lanterne Rouge in climb performance.

These wheels are now useable for relaxed rides, but we can’t recommend them for racing.

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